Software-defined datacenters (SDDC) and software-defined storage (SDS) are big movements in the industry right now. Just read the trade press or attend any conference and you’ll see that – it’s a big deal. We’re seeing for-pay vendors providing solutions, as well as strong ecosystems evolving around open source solutions. It’s not surprising why – there is a need for enterprises to deploy large scale compute clusters, and that takes either deep expertise that’s very rare, or orchestration tools that have not existed in the past. It’s the “necessity being the mother of invention” thing…

So datacenters are being forced to deploy large-scale clusters to handle the scale of compute needed, and the amount of data that is being captured, analyzed and stored. As an industry then, we’re being forced to simplify applications as well as the management and deployment of these large scale clusters. That’s great for datacenters. It’s even better that we’re figuring out how to provide those expanded resources and manage them for less money, and with fewer people to manage them. (well, it’s probably good for everyone but the sys admins…)

These new technologies are the key enabler. This blog, the second in my three-part series (based on interesting questions I was asked by CEO & CIO, a Chinese business magazine) examines how SDDC and SDS are helping enterprises get more out of their datacenter gear. You can read part 1 here.

CEO & CIO: What are your views on software-defined storage? What’s the development roadmap of LSI in achieving software-defined storage?

We see SDS as one of a number of vital changes underway in the datacenter. SDS promises to span some or all of file, object, key-value and block in order to pool resources and to simplify the infrastructure required in a datacenter, as well as to smooth the migration to object or key-value storage over time. Great examples of these SDS solutions are: Ceph, Swift, Cinder, Gluster, VSAN / VVOLs …. The model brings great benefits in datacenter management, resource pooling and allocation and usability. The main problem is performance – and by that I do not mean extreme performance. I mean poor performance that damages TCO, reduces efficiency of infrastructure and increases costs. Much worse than you would get otherwise. These solutions work, but compromise resource efficiency. Many require flash integrated in the system to simply maintain existing performance. However, this is a permanent change in how storage is used and deployed, and it’s a good change.

While block is what underlies most storage and will continue to for some time, the system and application level view is changing. We view SDS as having great synergy with LSI’s architectural direction – shared DAS infrastructure and ability to add “above the block” capability like quality of service (QoS), direct key/value hardware, etc, and bring improved performance and resource efficiency. Together, SDS + LSI innovation = resource pooling and allocation, including flash and cool/cold storage, management and virtual machine (VM) agility, performance and resource efficiency.

As a result, there has been tremendous interest from SDS vendors to work with us, to demonstrate prototype systems, and to make solutions better. We are working with many SDS partners to provide complete solutions. This is not a one-size-fits-all world, so there will be several solutions. Those solutions are not ready yet, but they’re coming, and will probably displace the older file and block storage systems we know and love.

CEO & CIO: Industry giants such as Intel have outlined their visions for software-defined datacenters. Chinese Internet giants have also put forward similar plans. What views does LSI have on software-defined datacenter?

If you view the AIS keynote, you’ll see we believe this is a critical part of the future datacenter. But just one critical part. Interestingly, we had Intel present as well during AIS.

SDDC creates a critical control plane for the datacenter. It is the software abstraction model that enables resource pooling. Resource pooling of compute, storage and network, with memory in the near future. It enables the automation and allocation of tasks and resources in the datacenter. The leading models are VMware® SDDC and OpenStack® software, but there are others that are important too. They’re just a little less public right now. Anyway – it’s way too early to predict which will be dominant. Just like SDS, SDDC exchanges simplified control and abstraction for performance and efficiency. As a result, it’s not a very useful concept, at least not at hyperscale levels, without hardware that really, truly supports and enables it. As the datacenter has changed from a compute-centric model to a dataflow model, the storage and network and, soon, memory become very important. They dictate the useful work that can be gotten from the datacenter.

I believe we are, as an industry, at the start of the hardware transition to support these. We are building hardware solutions for storage and network that are being designed into products today. We are working very closely with three of the largest datacenters in the US, and two in China to build not just the SDDC, but the pooled hardware infrastructure that is needed to make it work.

It’s critical to understand that SDDC solutions really work, but often the performance and efficiency is – well – terrible. That’s been the evolution in computer science and computer architecture since the beginning. You raise the abstraction level, which simplifies development and support, but either causes poor performance or requires more hardware capability that is architected to support those abstractions.

As a result, it’s really difficult to talk about SDDCs without a rack-scale architecture to support them. So we are working closely with the key SDDC software solutions/vendors, even the ones I didn’t list, to integrate and optimize the solutions to make the SDDC actually work. We have been working very closely with VMware and the OpenStack community, and we are changing the way the software plane interacts with the pooled resources. Again, there has been so much interest in our shared DAS, incorporating flash in the same architecture and management, and our Axxia® SDN control plane processor for networks.

Summary: So I believe SDS is a big movement, it’s a good thing, and it’s here to stay. But… the performance is poor today. Very poor. That’s where we come in, with hardware that enables SDS and not only makes performance acceptable, but helps make it excellent, and improves efficiency and cost too. And SDDC is also a massive movement that will define the future datacenter. But it is intertwined with the rack-level concepts of pooling or disaggregation to make it really compelling. Again – that’s where we come in.

These were good questions that were interesting to answer. I hope it’s interesting to you too. I’ll post some more soon about how the Chinese Internet giants differ from other customers, and about forward-looking technologies.

Turn on your smart phone and it works like charm. But explosive global adoption of smart phones with feature-rich applications is stressing mobile networks like never before. For mobile network providers, the challenge couldn’t be more acute: Find new ways to deliver more mobile bandwidth even as the average revenue per user remains flat.

In this AIS interview, LSI’s Jeff Connell, director of mobile networking product marketing, talks about how network providers are turning to heterogenous networks (HetNets) to reduce the cost of deploying, scaling and managing mobile networks. One way network providers are streamlining deployments is by using equipment built with smart silicon like LSI Axxia. The highly integrated ASIC helps customers cut the cost and power of new network equipment designs.

Reducing network latencySpeed is the currency of smart phone communications. Users want their information without delays. Here, Jon Devlin, director of networking ecosystem at LSI, discusses the importance of reducing network latency for applications including mobile video conferencing and voice over IP.

The United Nations finding that mobile broadband subscriptions are surging in developing countries, reported by The New York Times on Sept. 26, is no surprise. Equally unsurprising, the growing number of users, density of users and increasing bandwidth needs of applications likely are continuing to strain existing wireless networks and per-user bandwidths not only in developing countries but worldwide.

But rising pressure on bandwidth, coupled with increasingly data-intensive applications, isn’t the whole story. Minimizing end-to-end latency – from user to network base station and back again – is crucial in enabling banking, e-commerce, enterprise and other important business applications. Why? The greater the latency, the more likely visitors are to lose interest if the responsiveness of the website is sluggish. A connection may have plenty of throughput over a period of time, but response time determines the user experience.

The bandwidth-per-user and end-to-end network latency constraints are bound to drive changes both to the front haul and backhaul access networks. LTE and WiFi seem to be clear winners for the front haul network (replacing wired LAN technologies). On the backhaul, given the capacity needs, wired and wireless networks are bound to converge but will likely offer many options that will continue to co-exist like LTE, Fiber, Cable, xDSL and Microwave.

For our part, LSI has deep experience building mission-critical networks for service providers and datacenters – an expertise that has been brought to bear on the development of LSI® Axxia® networking solutions. These smart chips help solve the latency problem by enabling reliable, deterministic network performance to, ultimately, quicken response times and improve the user experience.

And that, after all, is just what network providers and users are after as mobile devices continue to support more applications and rising performance expectations worldwide.